The Flaming Lips - Dark Side of the Moon

dorokusai

If you're a Lips fan this is a must have.....its fantastic. A complete cover of the entire album. The studio sessions video for Breathe is kinda cool. I don't dig everything they've done but Wayne is a very good songwriter with a good ear for structure and overlapping melodies.

Flaming Lips

Demiurge

I guess I'm not sure why they had to screw around with a classic like this. I listened to it and it's different, as are most of the things the F-Lips do, so I had to listen to the whole thing. At the end I found myself wanting to bash Henry Rollins head in with a brick.

dorokusai

Well not every suggestion is a winner and I just threw your xmas card in the trash.

Demiurge

It's not like it's bad and I don't want to be a purist **** whining about them monkeying around with a classic album, but that's exactly what I'm being.

I do think if you're a F-Lips fan it's worth checking out. The Time/Breathe In (Reprise) was pretty good.

Demiurge

On New Year's Eve, the Flaming Lips are set to turn Oklahoma City's Cox Center into the capital of Weirdsville, U.S.A. when they bring their annual Freakout music-and-lights explosion to their hometown. Along with a standard Lips set and "the world's biggest balloon drop," the band will ring in 2010 by playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety with Stardeath and the White Dwarfs, a group led by Wayne Coyne's nephew Dennis. (The recently recorded Lips/Stardeath version of Dark Side, featuring guest spots by Peaches and Henry Rollins, is available for purchase on iTunes starting December 22.) Even in the psychotic realm of Flaming Lips gigs, this one looks to be extra nuts.

So we got Wayne and Dennis Coyne on the phone to talk about Pink Floyd, Christmas, and the illicit wonders of online videos. Happy holidays:


Pitchfork: Have you ever tried to sync up Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz?

Wayne Coyne: Of course. I think what really spurred that phenomenon on is that everybody secretly thinks, "Oh, here is a good change to listen to Dark Side of the Moon and watch The Wizard of Oz." It's like having a chance to sleep in on Saturday and eat ice cream, like, "I'll do that. **** it." Our new version would probably sync up in some philosophical aspects with Tron, which probably is not very watchable unless you have some really good music or marijuana to get you through it.

Pitchfork: What movie do you think Embryonic would go well with?

WC: The movies that triggered some of the imagery while we were actually making Embryonic were these two weird movies that are sort of about S&M and obsessive sexual freak-out behavior: The Night Porter, this Italian **** movie, and Last Tango in Paris. I must have been considering these elements of pleasure and pain and masochistic ****. Why not? I'm an adult, I can do that.

Pitchfork: Wasn't Last Tango in Paris pretty controversial when it came out?

WC: Yeah, the most controversial scene is when Marlon Brando has that woman put butter on her fist and stick it up his ****. Even though you don't really get to see it, that's always kind of brutal. It's not like watching stuff on the internet now, where people actually do these things, which isn't really fun at all. But the way they do it-- with good lighting and nice-looking people and good music-- it's still disturbing. Context changes everything. You know, when you stick things up your ****, context takes precedent. [laughs]

Pitchfork: Do you watch those kind of videos online?

WC: No matter who you are, you'll run into somebody who'll be like, "Jesus, you gotta see this video!" and there'll be some woman squirting eels out of her **** or something. In some ways I think it's funny. We live in good times; we can watch something like that and get on with our day. I mean, I don't want to have a woman squirting eels out of her butt while I'm there, but I'll watch it on video for 20 seconds.

Pitchfork: Back to Dark Side. What are you guys planning for the New Year's Eve Freakout show?

WC: I'm picking up this giant mirror ball apparatus that we've been having welded by some truss experts outside of Dallas. It's 20 feet around. The guy who is doing the final inspection of it is the same guy who made Pink Floyd's giant mirror ball in 1995. He was like, "Let me tell you Wayne, this is even bigger than Pink Floyd's!" So Wayne's balls are bigger than Pink Floyd's. [laughs]

Dennis Coyne: Over the summer, the Lips commissioned me and my dad to glue tiny mirrors onto the 20-foot half-circle. We sat there and worked on this giant mirror ball eight hours a day for two weeks. It was all I could think about; I'd go to sleep and think about these mirrors and how I was going to glue them and what kind of glue I should use.

Pitchfork: Did you always like Dark Side of the Moon? It seems like that album helped start the era of overblown rock that punk eventually tried to take down.

WC: Dark Side of the Moon gets slagged a lot because it's so popular, but I never felt that way. And even though John Lydon had that "I hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt, he would probably be the first person to say that the early days of Pink Floyd were very much punk rock. They were just some guys who couldn't play that well who decided, "**** it, we're going to make some weird noises and call ourselves Pink Floyd." Punk quickly became a knee-jerk clich

dorokusai

I would LOVE to eat gummi fetuses.

vc69

Demiurge wrote: »

At the end I found myself wanting to bash Henry Rollins head in with a brick.

Hey! Wha'd Henry do to you?


j/k

I'm not a much of a FL fan. I did a sound gig with them about 100 years ago (about 20 actually) in a bar. It was a much smaller band (4 piece IIRC) and I thought my hearing would never return to normal. They were the loudest thing I have ever experienced.

comfortablycurt

Interesting...The Flaming Lips are pretty cool. I've never heard this though.

I'll definitely have to check it out. Thanks for the suggestion.:)

nguyendot

I know one of their Roadies named Justin.... from way back when. Great band.

zombie boy 2000

I've been a Flaming Lips fan for nearly twenty years. Their shows are legendary. The Soft Bulletin should be in EVERYONE'S collection. Not much to add...

Funny story about Wayne Coyne. He made the mistake of handing out his home phone number to a couple of snot-nosed brats who had shelled out some serious ducets to see them play a 30 min set opening for (GASP!!!!) Collective Soul back in '95. I guess he felt bad that we had to open up the vault just to see them.

A weekend didn't go by where we weren't drunk dialing him. And damned, if he didn't answer the phone every single time and talk our ear off in return. I'll never forget that.

Demiurge

Damn, their version of Brain Damage sounds so good on my system...

Montoya

I missed out on this one they are going on eBay for about 50-60 already the Record store day exclusive.

Keiko wrote: »

I picked this up on clear vinyl today at a local record store. They were spinning it and I found myself kinda diggin' it while browsing through records, so I just went ahead and bought it. Uhmmm, it is definitely a different spin on DSotM. Might not be for everyone, but it's an interesting cover.